The pitfalls of publicizing ethics research

What happens to our research once it hits the popular media? Do marketers know how to promote our research in a way that is understandable and complete, while still capturing an audience? This case study follows the dissemination of the results of a consumer ethics study via a single press release, along with the resulting media coverage, interviews and audience comments. Perhaps in their quest for a touch of controversy, the story picked up by the popular press was not the one intended by the authors. If getting the public story right is important, marketing academics need to spend as much time carefully crafting their press releases as they do writing journal manuscripts – they may not be able to rely on the ethics of media sub-editors who choose controversial headlines.

The international search for ethics norms : which consumer behaviors do consumers consider (un)acceptable?

Purpose: Businesses cannot rely on their customers to always do the right thing. To help researchers and service providers better understand the dark (and light) side of customer behavior, this study aims to aggregate and investigate perceptions of consumer ethics from young consumers on five continents. The study seeks to present a profile of consumer behavioral norms, how ethical inclinations have evolved over time, and country differences. ---------- Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected from ten countries across five continents between 1997 and 2007. A self-administered questionnaire containing 14 consumer scenarios asked respondents to rate acceptability of questionable consumer actions. ---------- Findings: Overall, consumers found four of the 14 questionable consumer actions acceptable. Illegal activities were mostly viewed as unethical, while some legal actions that were against company policy were viewed less harshly. Differences across continents emerged, with Europeans being the least critical, while Asians and Africans shared duties as most critical of consumer actions. Over time, consumers have become less tolerant of questionable behaviors. ---------- Practical implications: Service providers should use the findings of this study to better understand the service customer. Knowing what customers in general believe is ethical or unethical can help service designers focus on the aspects of the technology or design most vulnerable to customer deviance. ---------- Multinationals already know they must adapt their business practices to the market in which they are operating, but they must also adapt their expectations as to the behavior of the corresponding consumer base. Originality/value: This investigation into consumer ethics helps businesses understand what their customer base believes is the right thing in their role as customer. This is a large-scale study of consumer ethics including 3,739 respondents on five continents offering an evolving view of the ethical inclinations of young consumers.

Uncertainties that matter : risk, response-ability, ethics and the moment of exchange in Live Art

This article examines the moment of exchange between artist, audience and culture in Live Art. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples, including examples from the Exist in 08 Live Art Event in Brisbane, Australia, in October 2008, it argues that Live Art - be it body art, activist art, site-specific performance, or other sorts of performative intervention in the public sphere - is characterised by a common set of claims about activating audiences, asking them to reflect on cultural norms challenged in the work. Live Art presents risky actions, in a context that blurs the boundaries between art and reality, to position audients as ‘witnesses’ who are personally implicated in, and responsible for, the actions unfolding before them. This article problematises assumptions about the way the uncertainties embedded in the Live Art encounter contribute to its deconstructive agenda. It uses the ethical theory of Emmanuel Levinas, Hans-Thies Lehmann and Dwight Conquergood to examine the mechanics of reductive, culturally-recuperative readings that can limit the efficacy of the Live Art encounter. It argues that, though ‘witnessing’ in Live Art depends on a relation to the real - real people, taking real risks, in real places - if it fails to foreground theatrical frame it is difficult for audients to develop the dual consciousness of the content, and their complicity in that content, that is the starting point for reflexivity, and response-ability, in the ethical encounter.

Review of Dr. Richard Shapcott's International Ethics : A Critical Introduction. 2010. London: Polity Press. ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-3142-4.

This work by Richard Shapcott is, as the title provides, an introduction to international ethics. By taking a quick glance at the table of contents (see Figure 1) we see that he has systematically divided this particular discourse into its normative areas of concern (in other words its major areas of argument or research). When reading, we also see that a great deal of work has gone into the publication because the narrative is flowing, the arguments continuous, and because the tone of the work maintained its critical position throughout.

An interview with Dr. Richard Shapcott : the international ethics of 'Basic Democracy'

Dr. Richard Shapcott is the senior lecturer in International Relations at the University of Queensland. His areas of interest in research concern international ethics, cosmopolitan political theory and cultural diversity. He is the author of the recently published book titled International Ethics: A Critical Introduction; and several other pieces, such as, “Anti-Cosmopolitanism, the Cosmopolitan Harm Principle and Global Dialogue,” in Michalis’ and Petito’s book, Civilizational Dialogue and World Order. He’s also the author of “Dialogue and International Ethics: Religion, Cultural Diversity and Universalism, in Patrick Hayden’s, The Ashgate Research Companion to Ethics and International Relations.

Indigeneity and the judicial decision to imprison : a study of Western Australia’s higher courts

Internationally, sentencing research has largely neglected the impact of Indigeneity on sentencing outcomes. Using data from Western Australia’s higher courts for the years 2003–05, we investigate the direct and interactive effects of Indigenous status on the judicial decision to imprison. Unlike prior research on race/ethnicity in which minority offenders are often found to be more harshly treated by sentencing courts, we find that Indigenous status has no direct effect on the decision to imprison,after adjusting for other sentencing factors (especially past and current criminality).However, there are sub-group differences: Indigenous males are more likely to receive a prison sentence compared to non-Indigenous females. We draw on the focal concerns perspective of judicial decision making in interpreting our findings.

Research Ethics and Creative Arts Hypothetical

The merits of a research project are commonly framed in terms of perceived benefits with respect to knowledge production, wellbeing, the social good, and so on. Such measures can, however, be at odds with certain types of creative practice, which may be perceived as frivolous, unsettling, or shocking. Moreover, creative practice research methodologies commonly eschew more traditional research conventions. In exploring these tensions, this live performance event (including a DVD component) adapted key dramatic principles developed in Geoffrey Robertson's groundbreaking Hypotheticals. The event was presented for an audience of staff and students at QUT's Creative Industries Faculty in July 2010. It confirmed Dr Angela Romano's contention that: “Part of the ethical clearance process for practice-led researchers will be to find a language to explain the methodology, significance, merit and integrity of their research to people outside their field of practice.” (Angela Romano, QUT Creative Industries) “Part of the ethical clearance process for practice-led researchers will be to find a language to explain the methodology, significance, merit and integrity of their research to people outside their field of practice.”

Experiential ethics education for IT professionals

This chapter presents a new approach to IT ethics education that may be used by teachers in academic institutions, employees responsible for promoting ethics in organisations and individuals wanting to pursue their own professional development. Experiential ethics education emphasises deep learning that prompts a changed experience of ethics. We first consider how this approach complements other ways of engaging in ethics education. We then explore what it means to strive for experiential change and offer a model which may be useful in pursuing IT professional ethics education in this way.

Enhancing professional ethics : service-learning in teacher education

The ethical conduct of professionals has been the focus of increasing scrutiny over the past several decades as members of the public, the media, professional bodies, and legislative authorities have struggled to define ethical behaviour in times of governmental change, increasing internationalisation, globalised communications, threats of terrorism, and the challenges of developments in science and medicine (e.g., Demmke & Bossaert, 2004). National governments and transnational bodies have responded to these concerns about ethics and corruption through measures such as the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2004), Transparency International’s annual corruption index (2010) and Queensland’s Public Sector Ethics Act 1994 (Queensland Parliament 1994). Similarly, academic interest in ethics and its application across a range of domains(e.g., business, health care, social welfare, criminal justice, law, journalism, defence, environment, and media) has also increased. To illustrate, in 1993, a non-partisan, non-profit national umbrella organisation, the Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics, was formed following a conference concerned with the teaching of ethics (http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au./aapae/about_aapae/about_aapae.htm), while a recent review of the Excellence in Research for Australian rankings of national and international academic journals revealed that 16 journals related to ethics had received the top ratings of A* or A (Australian Research Council, 2009). In this chapter we examine professional ethics and argue, with specific reference to the context of pre-service teacher education, that Service-learning is one way of enhancing emerging professionals’ understanding of ethics.

Ethics and Socially Responsible Investment : A Philosophical Approach

This volume breaks new ground by approaching Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) as an explicitly ethical practice in financial markets. The work explains the philosophical and practical shortcomings of ‘long term shareholder value’ and the origins and conceptual structure of SRI, and links its pursuit to both its deeper philosophical foundations and the broader, multi-dimensional global movement towards greater social responsibility in global markets. Interviews with fund managers in the Australian SRI sector generate recommendations for better integrating ethics into SRI practice via ethically informed engagement with invested companies, and an in-depth discussion of the central practical SRI issue of fiduciary responsibility strengthens the case in favour of SRI. The practical and ethical theoretical perspectives are then brought together to sketch out an achievable ideal for SRI worldwide, in which those who are involved in investment and business decisions become part of an ‘ethical chain’ of decision makers linking the ultimate owners of capital with the business executives who frame, advocate and implement business strategies. In between there are investment advisors, fund managers, business analysts and boards. The problem lies in the fact that the ultimate owners are discouraged from considering their own values, or even their own long term interests, whilst the others often look only to short term interests. The solution lies in the latter recognising themselves as links in the ethical chain.

The role of legislative, executive and judicial mechanisms in ensuring a fair and effective asylum process

A good faith reading of core international protection obligations requires that states employ appropriate legislative, administrative and judicial mechanisms to ensure the enjoyment of a fair and effective asylum process. Restrictive asylum policies instead seek to ‘denationalize’ the asylum process by eroding access to national statutory, judicial and executive safeguards that ensure a full and fair hearing of an asylum claim. From a broader perspective, the argument in this thesis recognizes hat international human rights depend on domestic institutions for their effective implementation, and that a rights-based international legal order requires that power is limited, whether that power is expressed as an instance of the sovereign right of states in international law or as the authority of governments under domestic constitutions.

Legal ethics in a post-Westphalian world : building the international rule of law and otehr tasks

The emergence of strong sovereign states after the Treaty of Westphalia turned two of the most cosmopolitan professions (law and arms) into two of the least cosmopolitan. Sovereign states determined the content of the law within their borders – including which, if any, ecclesiastical law was to be applied; what form of economic regulation was adopted; and what, if any, international law applied. Similarly, states sought to ensure that all military force was at their disposal in national armies. The erosion of sovereignty in a post-Westphalian world may significantly reverse these processes. The erosion of sovereignty is likely to have profound consequences for the legal profession and the ethics of how, and for what ends, it is practised. Lawyers have played a major role in the civilization of sovereign states through the articulation and institutionalisation of key governance values – starting with the rule of law. An increasingly global profession must take on similar tasks. The same could be said of the military. This essay will review the concept of an international rule of law and its relationship to domestic conceptions and outline the task of building the international rule of law and the role that lawyers can and should play in it.

Estoppel in the face of consumer protection in land transactions- judicial reasoning or judicial intuition

Nationally, there is much legislation regulating land sale transactions, particularly in relation to seller disclosure of information. The statutes require strict compliance by a seller failing which, in general, a buyer can terminate the contract. In a number of instances, when buyers have sought to exercise these rights, sellers have alleged that buyers have either expressly or by conduct waived their rights to rely upon these statutes. This article examines the nature of these rights in this context, whether they are capable of waiver and, if so, what words or conduct might be sufficient to amount to waiver. The analysis finds that the law is in a very unsatisfactory state, that the operation of those rules that can be identified as having relevance are unevenly applied and concludes that sellers have, in the main, been unsuccessful in defeating buyers' statutory rights as a result of an alleged waiver by those buyers.

Professions without borders : global ethics and the international rule of law

The emergence of strong sovereign states after the Treaty of Westphalia turned two of the most cosmopolitan professions (law and arms) into two of the least cosmopolitan. Sovereign states determined the content of the law within their borders – including which, if any, ecclesiastical law was to be applied; what form of economic regulation was adopted; and what, if any, international law applied. Similarly, states sought to ensure that all military force was at their disposal in national armies. The erosion of sovereignty in a post-Westphalian world may significantly reverse these processes. The erosion of sovereignty is likely to have profound consequences for the legal profession and the ethics of how, and for what ends, it is practised. Lawyers have played a major role in the civilization of sovereign states through the articulation and institutionalisation of key governance values – starting with the rule of law. An increasingly global profession must take on similar tasks. The same could be said of the military. This essay will review the concept of an international rule of law and its relationship to domestic conceptions and outline the task of building the international rule of law and the role that lawyers can and should play in it.